The 2014 EDHEC Open Innovation event March 11 and 12 brought together 570 MiM students, 50 business coaches from 18 companies, and 15 Edhec professors for a collaborative event that illustrates the power of team work and resulted in some truly creative concepts for product innovation and brand exposure.

This annual event allows Edhec students to work side-by-side with business professionals, to test their management knowledge and business instincts, and to make important contacts for internships and jobs. The event is appreciated by students because it throws them into a real-world business situation and introduces them to professionals who share the latest in product design, marketing techniques, and customer experience technology.

EDHEC’s business partners also win because they get to work with bright and motivated students to find new business solutions, and can recruit future employees in a casual environment. It’s this type of experience that sets EDHEC apart from other schools and defines the EDHEC for Business motto.

During the 2014 event, students worked with company coaches from Carrefour, Viadeo and Orange, among others companies, to prepare their ideas and perfect their pitches. At the end of the day, teams gathered in EDHEC’s grand performance hall to present their ideas to a jury of professors and executives. Also participating this year were students from the Ecole Centrale de Lille, with which EDHEC offers a dual master’s degree in engineering and management.

2014 Open Innovation winners were the “Bento Box”, a concept for Casino stores to increase sales of pre-packaged food items to occasional vegetarians, and a Nemo the fish board game for TFI Games for consumers between the ages of 4-8. A Twitter hashtag - #EDHECOpenInno – allowed participants to exchange information and photos.

Students shared the following comments about the event:

“During the Open Innovation event we got to have direct contact with managers who shared with us their insight of the corporate world and its issues. This was much less formal than a lecture and much more fun!”

“This seminar was very dynamic and allowed us to concretely understand what the stakes of innovation are. Plus, the managers were really nice.”

About EDHEC

Operating from campuses in Lille, Nice, Paris, London and Singapore, EDHEC is one of the world’s top 20 business schools. Fully international and directly connected to the business world, EDHEC is a school for business, rather than a business school, where excellence in teaching and research focuses on innovation to stimulate entrepreneurship and creativity. For business from birth and dedicated to business, EDHEC makes entrepreneurs for life, able to remodel or create successful businesses wherever they work.EDHEC functions as a genuine laboratory of ideas and produces innovative solutions valued by businesses. The School’s teaching philosophy, inspired by its award-winning research activities, focuses on “learning by doing”.